


in the cool of the evening

by coalitiongirl



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-16 03:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: A year after Germany, Scott encounters Hope in a drugstore in the middle of the night.





	in the cool of the evening

**Author's Note:**

> whew........love that angst

There are times when Scott thinks that he’s fucked up so much that there’s no coming back from it, when he knows that he absolutely deserves what he’s gotten and more. There are times when he wonders if he’ll ever break this endless cycle of  _ hurting  _ and  _ hurting others  _ and being alone for it. There are times when, locked in a house for fourteen months, he thinks it might be for the best, after all, and Woo is right for designating him a  _ danger _ . 

Right now is one of those times, because he is…this is the worst thing he’s ever done, he knows. This makes him sick to his stomach. But he has no choice. 

He closes the ankle monitor around Cassie’s leg, and she frowns sleepily at him past her pale, pale face. “I don’t want you to get in trouble,” she says, her eyes wide. She’s  _ nine _ , cursed with a worry beyond her years for her own father even while she moans in pain. “Is it going to be okay?” 

He forces a smile. “I’m a pro at this, remember? And it’s three o’clock in the morning. The only thing the FBI is going to see in the morning is a little blip on their monitors. Nothing unusual.” The monitor has a delay programmed in for those blips, and it won’t register the seconds that it had been shut off, removed from Scott’s ankle, and placed onto Cassie’s. “I’m so, so sorry about this.” 

He _hates _this, hates every part of it. But he has no choice. Maggie and Paxton are out of the country on vacation, and they’d been careful to make sure that Scott is fully stocked with everything he’d need for Cassie. And he’d _had _children’s Tylenol, he’d had a whole bottle of it, but Cassie had decided to try to get it herself instead of waking him up and had spilled it all over the floor. 

And here she is, whimpering in bed with a fever and a terrible headache, and no one is answering the phone because it’s fucking  _ three o’clock in the morning  _ and Scott is on his own.

“Stay put, Peanut,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her hot forehead. “I’m going to be back before you know it.” Cassie nods, letting out another moan, and Scott wraps a blanket around her and leaves her alone in the house, sick and with an ankle monitor on her leg. 

He’s too agitated to enjoy the freedom that comes with being able to step off of his property, the sensation of walking down the street without sirens and Woo’s disapproving face. Cassie is home on her own, in pain, and Scott has to risk years in prison right now to help her. 

There’s a twenty-four hour drugstore three blocks down. This shouldn’t take long. The streets are silent this late at night, a few figures moving in the dark up ahead who scatter when they see him coming. There’s a single car in the drugstore parking lot, a few kids leaning against it as they argue in low tones, and Scott pulls his sweatshirt hood over his face and slips into the store.

Inside, the store is brightly lit, and the clerk is snoozing behind the counter. There’s almost no one inside, short of a woman in a hoodie examining something in the medicine aisle. Scott walks past her, his heart still pounding like he’s running a marathon. His phone buzzes, and he glances down and winces.

It’s a text from Cassie on the phone they’d gotten her for emergencies.  _ drank sum watr n feel WAY!! beter now!!! gonna sleep ok luv u daddy _ . “Oh, Peanut,” he murmurs, shaking his head, but he’s relieved. His grand escape from the house had been unnecessary, but at least Cassie’s okay. 

He picks up the children’s Tylenol anyway, then grabs a second and a third just in case. After this incident, he can’t be too careful. He’s brought along cash to pay for the medicine without leaving a trail. He heads back down the aisle, when he freezes, taking in his surroundings. 

Something is wrong.  _ No,  _ not wrong. He has a good feel for when something is off, and he can sense it now. Something has changed around him.

He glances first at the clerk. Still snoozing. There are still those kids outside, their voices loud and belligerent enough to drift into the drugstore. And beyond them, there’s only the woman, her shoulders stiff and her head ducked down so Scott can’t see her face. 

It’s her. She’d been tense when he’d walked past her before, but she’s even more so now, standing with a brittle kind of stiffness. Is she with the FBI? Has she recognized him?

He tosses her another sidelong glance. He isn’t stupid enough to approach her. Instead, he goes to the counter and clears his throat until the clerk jolts awake and gives him a glare, as though he’s the jerk for waking the kid up. He pays in cash, and he waits until the clerk is counting out the change before he twists around to catch the woman staring at him. 

His heart stops. Across the aisle, in a drugstore at three in the morning, Hope Van Dyne is staring at him. She looks…different. Her hair is long now, loose and spilling out of her hood to frame her makeup-free face. Hope when he’d known her had been sharp and strong, every edge of her polished and perfect. This Hope is rough, raw, her eyes dark and her body lean and poised for violence. 

Caught in his stare, she stares back, and Scott sucks in a breath and wonders if his heart is ever going to start beating again.

They haven’t spoken since after Germany, when he’d called her on his old burner phone to try to explain. He’d been met with fury, with disbelief from a woman who’d just discovered that she’s been made a fugitive by Scott’s actions, and she’d hung up on him in the middle of his third apology. She’d ignored every call that had followed, and he’d left messages at first, at least one a day, right up until she’d disconnected her phone entirely.

He’d considered calling Hank, too, to try to get through to Hope, but he suspects that Hank would have disconnected his line after the first call. He couldn’t lose that final link to them, and so he’d had to stop trying.

Maggie had been the first woman he’d loved, and he hadn’t dated many girls at all before her. He remembers that love as being simple, being easy, two people who’d been very alike enjoying each other’s company until marriage. Hope had…

Hope had never been easy. Hope is nothing like Scott, and they’d fallen into a relationship that had been more about their circumstances than about any compatibility. At least, that’s what he’d told himself. They’d been attracted to each other– because  _ wow _ , Hope is pretty much the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, and she’s also dangerous and soft-eyed and vulnerable to boot– and they’d gotten along, and that had been enough for a while until it wasn’t.

He’d told himself that when he’d set aside the burner phone, when he’d laid in bed and stared at the ceiling for a full, useless few days afterward. It’s not like they were going to be  _ long-term _ . Hope would have moved on to someone like her– to someone wealthy and suave and with his act together– even if Germany hadn’t happened. He’d bounce back like he always does.

It feels very, very foolish to have believed that now. 

His chest is hollow, his heart carved from his body with a knife. He’s been  _ yearning  _ for a long time, has been craving something he couldn’t name, but he’s told himself that it’s only an escape from his house. Now, his heart quakes, and it’s impossible to tell himself that anymore. 

He raises a weak hand in a wave at her, and she jerks her head away from him, grabbing a generic itch cream from the shelf and stalking to the counter. 

Scott can’t stop himself from speaking to her. It’s magnetic, the way he’s drawn to Hope Van Dyne, incapable of doing anything but floating in her orbit. “Bug bites?” he says, raising his eyebrows.

She gives him a cold look. “It’s for my father,” she bites out. 

Okay, so yeah, she still hates him. But he goes on, desperate to have this contact with her, brief as it’ll be. It’s a tiny snapshot of her life right now, on the run and making time to run out at three am for Hank Pym. “You two are still…I’m glad you two have worked things out,” he tries.

Her eyes flicker, an instant of uncertainty on her face. Hope, he’d found, is someone startled by kindness, by anyone investing in her life other than herself. A byproduct of years with a father who’d been so busy grieving his wife that he’d forgotten his daughter.

He waits, and her eyes turn hard again. “Don’t talk to me,” she says, and she turns deliberately away from him. 

The clerk says, “Hey, can you fight with your girlfriend after she pays?” He looks annoyed with them, and Scott nods mechanically and takes a step back. Hope’s shoulders are stiff again, her eyes averted, and she ignores him as she pays. 

She stalks past him before he can speak again, walking out the door and down the street as he trails after her. She doesn’t want him to follow, and he’s caught between two options, between begging for her to give him a  _ chance  _ or letting her go like a non-creepy dude would do. 

He picks the latter. He’s screwed up enough for her already. Reluctantly, he turns to walk in the opposite direction, passing the parking lot again and checking his phone in case Cassie has messaged him again. 

“Hey.” For a minute, he thinks that Hope has changed her mind. But no, he wouldn’t be that lucky. It’s one of the kids from the parking lot, his friends prowling behind him. “Give me your phone and your wallet,” the kid says.

And  _ fuck _ , the kid’s got a gun. 

The first thing that Scott thinks about is Cassie, alone in his house and without anyone to check up on her if Scott gets shot. Then, the realization of  _ oh, shit, if I get shot I’m going to jail _ . 

The kid’s voice is loud, rough, and his friends lurk with hungry eyes. “I don’t like your face, man,” he snarls. “Give me your wallet or I’ll blow out your brains.” 

Scott holds up his hands, forcing his voice to stay calm. “Okay,” he says, and he takes a step forward. “Just…chill, yeah? I’m giving you what you want.” He reaches for his pocket, holding out his wallet in one hand and his phone in the other. “We good here?” 

But he knows already that they aren’t. These kids don’t want his wallet. Their faces are twisted in ugly scowls, and they’re moving toward him like wolves, hungry for some violence. They’re big, all of them, hulking figures taller than he is, and he drops his wallet and phone and bag and runs. 

They follow.

He’s out of shape, too long spent alone in his house, and they’re on him in seconds. A gunshot rings out, tearing into a wall next to him, and a kid jumps him, slamming his fist into the back of Scott’s head. Scott twists around, kicking outward with the practiced skill from months of training in Hank’s basement, and he punches one and hears a grunt of pain.

But there are too many of them, and the idiot with a gun is still firing it. Scott beats at them, struggles to push them away, but he’s losing energy quickly, woozy from the first blow and weakened by the ones that follow. He’s going to pass out here, with Cassie alone at home, without his ankle monitor on. Woo is going to find him and he’s going to be–

And then, a body is thrown forcefully off of him and Hope Van Dyne is there. She throws a glancing punch at one of the kids, swings another away from him with practiced ease, and one of the other kids yells and launches himself at her. Scott regains his focus in an instant, surging up to throw the kid back. Hope punches another one, kicks at the next, and Scott shoves another away from her.

They’re  _ good _ at this, dispatching opponents with perfect synchrony. It’s what they’d trained for, once upon a time, when Hank had been working on the Wasp suit and Scott had imagined the two of them fighting as partners. They’d made a dangerous duo, and there is little that Scott had ever believed that they wouldn’t be capable of when they fight together.

It only takes minutes. The first kid is disarmed, and the rest scatter, staggering down the street and yelling curses behind them. There are eight of them in all, Scott counts. More than he’d thought, and they’re all gone now.

Beside him, Hope is breathing hard, her eyes flashing with fury and grief at once as she watches the kids scramble off. Her fists are still clenched, and she’s shaking. “Hey,” Scott whispers, and Hope turns to look at him in a jerky motion. “We still make a good team, huh?” 

Hope doesn’t respond. Her eyes gleam, and she breathes in a shuddering breath, and Scott thinks for a gripped moment that she’s never looked more beautiful. “Hope,” he tries, and he’s sure in this instant that he would do anything,  _ anything _ , if it meant that she’d stay here with him right now.

She closes her eyes. “Get your wallet,” she says, her voice scratchy and hoarse. “Get the Tylenol. Cassie needs it, right?” 

“Less than I thought she would,” he mutters ruefully, but he takes a few steps backward, toward where he’d dropped the bag. A part of him is afraid that Hope is some kind of phantom, that if he turns away, she might disappear.

But she still stands in the dim moonlight as he stands again, still frozen in place as she stares at him. He takes a step forward to her, then another, approaching as he might walk toward a spooked woodland animal. Hope doesn’t move, her eyes glued to his, and Scott murmurs, “Thanks for not letting me bleed out on the pavement.” 

She laughs, a wet little burst of air, and she manages, “I did consider it.” She swallows, and Scott stops moving. He is close to her, only a foot between them, and Hope whispers, “You screwed us over.” 

Scott exhales, miserable with the knowledge of it. “I know.” 

“No.” Hope jabs a finger at him, her voice rising. “No, you don’t know a  _ thing _ . We trusted you– with the suit, with our secrets, with– I  _ trusted you _ ,” she spits out, and it’s furious now, her anger rising. “I don’t trust– and  _ you _ – you–” Her eyes glint hard and hot, a maelstrom of betrayed fury roiling within them. Scott feels them like a blow, but he can’t step back, can’t forfeit even an inch of proximity to Hope. “I despise you,” Hope grinds out, a wet sheen of tears dulling over the anger in her eyes.

“I know,” Scott says. There is nothing else he can, no real defense to what he’d done. He’d never meant for anyone to get hurt– had been lost in adrenaline and a fanboy moment that he hadn’t grasped the enormousness of until after he’d been in a cell– and he’s paying a price that doesn’t compare to what Hope and Hank are suffering. “I know, Hope, I’m  _ sorry _ , I wish I’d never–” 

She turns away from him, and he  _ can’t _ , he can’t lose her again when he’s only just found her. He can feel the yearning keeping time with his heartbeat, can feel the hollowness in his chest widening into a yawning chasm, and he takes a step forward. “Hope, please–” 

Hope shakes her head. “Don’t do this, Scott.” Her voice is still harsh, but she chokes out the words like she’s somewhere between fury and tears. “We’ve been  _ dealing _ . We’ve been picking up the pieces that you left behind. You can’t just…show up a year later and pretend that everything is ever going to be okay again.” 

“I know.” He feels like he keeps saying that, like he keeps acknowledging things he can’t undo. It’s been a year and he’d been sure he’d gotten over the whirlwind months he’d had with Hope and as Ant-Man, the time he’d spent fighting for something more than simplicity, the nights with Hope asleep in his bed and wrapped around him like forever. It’s been a year, the band-aid has been torn from the wound, and nothing has healed. “Nothing is okay. I’m–“ 

He takes a breath, and too much spills from him, shatters the laid-back demeanor he’s been trying to put on for the past year. “I’m practically back in jail. I had to put my ankle monitor on  _ Cassie  _ just to get her some goddamned medicine. I tried to be a hero and wound up the villain again. And I lost– I lost the best thing that’s happened to me since Cassie was born–“ He stops. 

Hope has turned again, is staring at him with those anguished eyes. “No,” she says, and she takes a step back. Scott moves toward her, still inexorably drawn, still incapable of letting her widen the gulf between them. “No, you don’t get to do this. You can’t–” 

“I miss you,” he says hoarsely, and that’s the thing about Hope. He feels…mild, usually, light and easy and muted in every way. Hope is fire and he is flowing water, and he can extinguish the worst of her flares. But she lights him up, too, brings him to life in a way that he so rarely feels, turns the rounded edges of the world into sharp contrast. “I miss you,” he whispers.

“Fuck you,” Hope hisses back, and her eyes are narrowing into angry slits. “ _ Fuck you _ –” And she reaches out to shove him away from her, and he knows that he can’t push anymore, can’t try to turn this impossible coincidence into redemption without making her even angrier.

Her hand bunches into his sweatshirt and then she yanks instead of pushes, grabs him and pulls him to her and grits out, “ _ Fuck you _ ,” again and then they’re kissing. Scott stumbles against the wall behind them, hitting it with a thump. His hands move up to Hope’s back as she attacks his lips, biting down on his lower lip as her fingers dig into his shirt. There is a fury behind their kisses, a desperate need like coming home for the first time in years, a fire like resentment and bitterness and longing all at once. 

Hope’s lips move to the side of Scott’s jaw, to his neck, and Scott tangles his hands in her long hair, moving them senselessly through it as he gasps out a strangled moan. Her fingers dig into his sides, painfully hard, and he craves the pain as much as he craves her touch, runs his hands along her skin, touches it as though he might memorize it all in a few stolen moments. 

Hope gasps against him, swaying unsteadily, and Scott catches her in his arms, slides his hands up until he’s cradling her face in them. “Scott,” she whispers. Her eyes are lost, small and hurt and pained, and he can’t tear his gaze from them. There is so much agony between them, so much that they’ve lost when they’d lost each other, and he aches with the knowledge that this isn’t–

This isn’t forgiveness. This isn’t reconciliation. This is  _ need _ , and he trembles with it and raises Hope’s face to his. He presses a kiss to her forehead and she shakes, squeezing her eyes shut. He kisses her eyelids, her cheeks, her temples, presses his lips to her skin with agonizing slowness. When his lips touch hers, she sags against him, their foreheads meeting.

They remain frozen like that for what feels eternal and ephemeral at once, Scott’s hands on Hope’s cheeks and Hope’s fingers pressed to his back beneath his sweatshirt. He’s leaning against her and holding her up at once, both of them locked to each other, both of them unmoving. Scott wants to speak– wants to say  _ I’m sorry  _ and  _ I need you  _ and  _ I love you  _ and  _ don’t leave me _ – but he knows that another word will send her away, will take Hope from him for good.

Her fingers press against the skin of his back, a tiny motion that sears his skin, and he brushes her loose hair from her face. Her eyes are still closed, but he watches her, traces with eyes the curve of her jaw, the freckles dappling her cheeks, the twist of her lips as she struggles not to speak. God, she’s everything he’s ever dreamed of.

“Hope.” He says her name in a ragged sob, and he knows when he speaks it that she’ll pull away. 

And she does, stumbling back a few steps, disoriented as she stares at him. “No,” she whispers. “No, I can’t–” 

She backs away like he had before, as stricken as he feels. He reaches out a hand for her, stretches it out between them in the wild, vain dream that Hope might come back. She shakes her head, her eyes hollow, and she turns on her heel and runs from him. 

Down the block, Scott sees a car appear out of nowhere, as though it had just grown from something very small. In the dark, he can see Hope’s figure as she climbs into the car, as the car starts with a low roar and illuminates the street. 

He still stands, his hand outstretched, and the car doesn’t move for a long moment. 

When it finally drives away, Scott lets out a gasping sob that he doesn’t recognize as his own and sinks down to his knees. He has to get home. He has to leave this dark street next to the parking lot before he’s jumped again. He has to…

He gathers up his things again and stumbles home, his hands still unsteady as he moves the ankle monitor back to his own leg. Cassie’s forehead is cool to the touch, and she opens her eyes for a moment to smile at him. “Daddy,” she murmurs sleepily, and she drifts off again.

He lies beside her for a moment, hugs her in her sleep, feeling decidedly fragile. Outside, there is light filtering in– from the moonlight and streetlamps and the occasional car driving by–

_ No _ . The car outside has stopped and shut off its headlights, idling in front of the house. He can hear the low roar, and he recognizes it already, carved into his mind with the entire encounter.

He walks to the window, stares out at the car, and waits, his heart beating fast. It’s close to four in the morning now. The entire encounter had happened in only an hour. In the morning, he’ll wonder if it had happened at all.

Except that Hope is parked outside of his house, and Woo and the FBI can go to  _ hell _ if she knocks on the door. He’ll risk everything– short of Cassie– if it means that he might…

That they might…

He waits, fingers pressing into the windowsill, eyes boring into the dark windows of the car. “Please,” he whispers, but there is no one who can hear him. 

The headlights switch back on, and the car drives away.


End file.
